EXCLUSIVE: Iranian state television released video footage Friday claiming to show the launch of a new type of medium-range ballistic missile, a few hours after it was displayed during a military parade in Tehran.

But it turns out Iran never fired a ballistic missile, sources say.

The video released by the Iranians was more than seven months old – dating back to a failed launch in late January, which resulted in the missile exploding shortly after liftoff, according to two U.S. officials.

President Trump had originally responded to the reported launch in a late-Saturday tweet, saying, “Iran just test-fired a Ballistic Missile capable of reaching Israel. They are also working with North Korea. Not much of an agreement we have!”

This was after Trump, speaking before world leaders at the United Nations, called the Iran nuclear deal an “embarrassment” to the United States.

EXCLUSIVE: Iranian state television released video footage Friday claiming to show the launch of a new type of medium-range ballistic missile, a few hours after it was displayed during a military parade in Tehran.

But it turns out Iran never fired a ballistic missile, sources say.

The video released by the Iranians was more than seven months old – dating back to a failed launch in late January, which resulted in the missile exploding shortly after liftoff, according to two U.S. officials.

President Trump had originally responded to the reported launch in a late-Saturday tweet, saying, “Iran just test-fired a Ballistic Missile capable of reaching Israel. They are also working with North Korea. Not much of an agreement we have!”

This was after Trump, speaking before world leaders at the United Nations, called the Iran nuclear deal an “embarrassment” to the United States.

Iran essentially trolled the President of the United States with a fake launch.

If only America had some other source of information. If only America spent a massive fraction of its budget on some kind of intelligence community comprised of dozens of agencies spread across the globe with assets on land and in the air and below the sea and all the way out into space utilizing hundreds of different kinds of sensors and employing tens of thousands of highly trained agents and analysts both civilian and military. If only we had something like THAT to advise the president.

The thing is, it's just about impossible to hide a launch. Especially in that region which is under a blanket of continuous overlapping surveillance by at least a dozen nations and international agencies.

The top general in the U.S. military said Tuesday that Iran is complying with a landmark nuclear deal and that the agreement has achieved its result of curbing Iran’s nuclear program.

But Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chief of staff, added that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) has done nothing to deter Iran from its other malign activities.

“The briefings I have received indicate that Iran is adhering to its JCPOA obligations,” Dunford wrote in answers to policy questions in advance of his Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing to serve a second term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

“The JCPOA has delayed Iran’s development of nuclear weapons,” he wrote. “Iran has not changed its malign activity in the region since JCPOA was signed.”

Asked during the hearing by Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) to elaborate, Dunford said the deal was specifically designed to address only Iran’s nuclear program and not the other four threats he sees emanating from Iran: its missile program, its maritime threat, its support for proxies and its cyber activities.

BEIRUT — President Trump’s assertive new strategy toward Iran is already colliding with the reality of Tehran’s vastly expanded influence in the Middle East as a result of the Islamic State war.

The launch of the strategy signaled an important shift in U.S. Mideast policy away from an ­almost exclusive focus on fighting the Islamic State to an effort that also pushes back against years of Iranian expansion in the region.

But the strategy offers no specifics for how to confront Iran’s pervasive presence on the ground in Iraq, Syria and beyond, raising questions about how easy it will be to push back against Iranian influence without triggering new conflicts.

The difficulty of changing tack on what has amounted in recent years to a tacit alliance with Iran in Iraq for the purpose of fighting the Islamic State was evident this week in a sharp ­rebuke by Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s call for ­Iranian-backed Iraqi militias to “go home.”

The president of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin visited Tehran on Wednesday for consultations with President Hassan Rouhani and the country’s clerical leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Khamenei is quoted by Tahrir [Liberation] as saying that Russia and Iran could cooperate to isolate the United States and blunt the effectiveness of US Treasury Department sanctions, through the bilateral use of local currencies instead of the dollar for international transactions.

Khamenei is bringing this up because Washington has put new sanctions on Iran. One of the ways Washington has of hurting Iran is to kick it off international bank exchanges operating with the dollar. In the severe sanction years of Obama, that step mightily interfered with Iran’s ability to trade, since without being part of the banking exchanges, which work in dollars, Iran had no way of receiving or remitting money in the course of trade transactions. Iran probably fears that Trump will try to get Iran kicked off the currency exchanges again.https://www.juancole.com/2017/11/khamen ... mping.html

Some sections of the crazy quilt that makes up the Trump administration want to push Iran back out of the Arab world and weaken it, in support of Israel and Saudi Arabia. Those actors have just been handed a big setback by Trump’s slurred and crazed announcement that he will move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and recognize it as the capital.

While Washington pols fondly imagine that all politics is elite politics, it isn’t actually the case. Ask Hosni Mubarak or Zine El Abidin Ben Ali. Political leaders have to get a minimum buy-in from their publics. One trial run for the 2011 Tunisian revolution was massive demonstrations in 2009 during the Israeli assault on little Gaza, where student activists, trade unionists, attorneys and others learned to network and get out enormous crowds. Ben Ali’s and Mubarak’s toadying to Washington helped make them so hated that they were overthrown, in part because Washington stands for economic policies that punish workers and the middle classes, but in part because Washington stands for stealing Palestinians’ land and making them homeless and poverty-stricken.

It isn’t that everyone doesn’t already know that Washington is on board with screwing over the Palestinians and humiliating the Arabs. But Trump just flaunted it in everyone’s face.

Iran: Anti-Regime Protests Erupt Across The Country As Protesters Chant ‘Death To The Dictator’

Anti-government protests have erupted in cities across Iran, including the capital Tehran, with reports of arrests as riot police were deployed to disperse the demonstrations.

BBC Persian reported the protests, which decried deteriorating economic conditions and corruption in the Islamic Republic, also were held in the cities of Isfahan, Kermanshah, Rasht, Qom, Sari and Hamedan as well as others.

In Kermanshah, where the largest demonstrations took place on their second day, protesters shouted slogans against the Iranian leader Ayatollah Khamenei, and in other cities they shouted “death to the dictator” and called for an end to ongoing Iranian involvement in regional conflicts in Iraq and Syria. ...

The country’s president Hassan Rouhani has staked his personal political capital on improving the Iranian economy. The landmark 2015 nuclear deal he signed with the U.S. and other world powers ended punishing sanctions on Tehran in exchange for Iran giving up its ambitions for a nuclear weapon.

While the economy has come out of recession and inflation has fallen, many businesses continue to struggle as a result of the lack of investment. The official unemployment rate stands at 12.4 percent.

There is widespread and seething discontent in Iran where repression is pervasive and economic hardship is getting worse - one BBC Persian investigation has found that on average Iranians have become 15% poorer in the past 10 years.

Protests have remained confined to relatively small pockets of mostly young male demonstrators who are demanding the overthrow of the clerical regime.

They have spread to small towns throughout the country and have the potential to grow in size.

But there is no obvious leadership. Opposition figures have long been silenced or sent into exile.

Some protesters have been calling for the return of the monarchy and the former shah's son, Reza Pahlavi, who lives in exile in the United States, has issued a statement supporting the demonstrations. But there are signs that he is as much in the dark about where these protests are going as anyone else.

But even before the session began, France’s ambassador, François Delattre, warned against “instrumentalization” of the protests “from the outside.”

“We must be wary of any attempt to exploit this crisis for personal ends, which would have a diametrically opposed outcome to that which is wished,” Mr. Delattre said.

The Russian ambassador, Vasily A. Nebenzya, was more blunt. He asked rhetorically why the Security Council had not taken up the issue of Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson, Mo., which were at times also met with a violent police response.

“The real reason for convening today’s meeting is not an attempt to protect human rights or promote the interests of the Iranian people, but rather as a veiled attempt to use the current moment to continue to undermine” the Iranian deal, Mr. Nebenzya said.

More ham-handed diplomacy in the age of Trump.

“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

More
Iran bans the teaching of English in primary schools, official says

Iran has banned the teaching of English in primary schools, a senior education official has said, after Islamic leaders warned that early learning of the language opened the way to a western “cultural invasion”.

“Teaching English in government and non-government primary schools in the official curriculum is against laws and regulations,” Mehdi Navid-Adham, head of the state-run high education council, told state television.

“The assumption is that in primary education the groundwork for the Iranian culture of the students is laid,” he said.

The teaching of English usually starts in middle school in Iran, at the ages of 12 to 14, but some primary schools below that age also have English classes.

Oh yeah? Maybe American schools should stop teaching Farsi.

“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

Women in Iran are pulling off their headscarves — and hoping for a ‘turning point’

ISTANBUL — Iranian women have been raising a new challenge to their Islamic government, breaking one of its most fundamental rules by pulling off their headscarves in some of the busiest public squares and brandishing them in protest.

While these guerrilla protesters number only in the dozens, Iran’s government has taken notice of their audacity. On Thursday, planned demonstrations to coincide with International Women’s Day were preempted by a heavy police presence on the streets of the capital, Tehran.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, marked the day with sharply worded tweets skewering Western countries for the immodesty of their women and trumpeting the virtues of the headscarf, or hijab.

“By promoting modest dress (#hijab), #Islam has blocked the path which would lead women to such a deviant lifestyle,” Khamenei tweeted in English. “Iranian women today, declare their . . . independence and export it to the world while preserving their ­#hijab.”

It was precisely the opposite message that one young woman hoped to send when she climbed atop a tall, metal utility box on a Tehran sidewalk in January and took off her headscarf, hoisting it overhead on a stick for all to see.

JUST IN: “We’ll see," President Trump responds when asked while seated next to French President Macron if he’ll be staying in the Iran nuclear deal: "The Iran Deal is a terrible deal."
9:54 AM - Apr 24, 2018

Trump is such a diplomat.

“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“We do have a very special relationship,” President Trump says as he brushes off what he describes as "dandruff" from French President Macron’s shoulder. “We have to make him perfect. He is perfect.”
10:00 AM - Apr 24, 2018

“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

Netanyahu is releasing what he calls "Iran's Secret Nuclear Files" with enlarged zibits. He's saying they have been cheating and there is a nuclear program. Apparently the US already has this information. Let's see what the market does. It's running live now on all the news networks.

Avatar Photo: "Adam Samuel Ben-Canaan, Trustee within the ADAM SAMUEL BEN-CANAAN, PMA" who published "attempted murder charges against ... Fogbow". Member of "The Bears Law and Forensic Science Team" (on his t-shirt).

It might be a hollow victory but it's a victory nonetheless for relatives of victims of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

A federal judge in New York on Tuesday ordered Iran to pay billions of dollars to parents, spouses, siblings and children of more than 1,000 9/11 victims, court documents obtained by ABC News show.

The default judgment issued by Judge George B. Daniels finds the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran are liable for the deaths of 1,008 people whose families sued.

1. Russia and China will completely reject new sanctions and will seek ways of trading with Iran that avoid US Treasury Department third party sanctions. The two of them are a pretty big market for Iran, and China is for now thirsty for petroleum (its automobiles are going electric but that will take a decade or more). Russia deeply resents Washington’s sanctions regime, from which its big businessmen suffer, and will delight in taking steps to weaken its effectiveness. China won’t be in a cooperative mood after Trump slapped big tariffs on its goods.
6. Trump is widely and deeply disliked and will have difficulty getting the voluntary cooperation of most traditional US allies in putting Iran under severe sanctions again.
8. There is also the question of what a new round of sanctions is supposed to achieve. Iran has already given up everything in the nuclear file it could possibly give up short of executing all its scientists and engineers so as to wipe out nuclear know-how as well. If the pressure is intended to stop the Iranian development of ballistic missiles for which it has nothing to put in the warheads, or to try to get Iran back out of Syria, those are goals for which mere US sanctions are probably insufficient.

The US will face enormous skepticism from allies, since they harmed themselves economically to get the 2015 deal and now will be told that wasn’t good enough and they have to do it all over again.

One caveat, which is that if Iran ramped up its nuclear enrichment program out of pique, it could drive the Europeans to put sanctions back on it. If Tehran is smart it will work to divide Western Europe from Trump by offering European firms sweetheart deals, even as it continues to observe the JCPOA deal to reassure Europe’s capitals.

Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says the Islamic Republic reserves the right to respond should the US, as a party to the 2015 nuclear deal, withdraw from the agreement.
Published on May 3, 2018

Former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, a key member of the American negotiating team that struck the deal, plus a response to charges laid out by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Published on May 2, 2018

Aides to Donald Trump, the US president, hired an Israeli private intelligence agency to orchestrate a “dirty ops” campaign against key individuals from the Obama administration who helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal, the Observer can reveal.

People in the Trump camp contacted private investigators in May last year to “get dirt” on Ben Rhodes, who had been one of Barack Obama’s top national security advisers, and Colin Kahl, deputy assistant to Obama, as part of an elaborate attempt to discredit the deal.

The extraordinary revelations come days before Trump’s 12 May deadline to either scrap or continue to abide by the international deal limiting Iran’s nuclear programme.

Jack Straw, who as foreign secretary was involved in earlier efforts to restrict Iranian weapons, said: “These are extraordinary and appalling allegations but which also illustrate a high level of desperation by Trump and [the Israeli prime minister] Benjamin Netanyahu, not so much to discredit the deal but to undermine those around it.”

One former high-ranking British diplomat with wide experience of negotiating international peace agreements, requesting anonymity, said: “It’s bloody outrageous to do this. The whole point of negotiations is to not play dirty tricks like this.”

Sources said that officials linked to Trump’s team contacted investigators days after Trump visited Tel Aviv a year ago, his first foreign tour as US president. Trump promised Netanyahu that Iran would never have nuclear weapons and suggested that the Iranians thought they could “do what they want” since negotiating the nuclear deal in 2015. A source with details of the “dirty tricks campaign” said: “The idea was that people acting for Trump would discredit those who were pivotal in selling the deal, making it easier to pull out of it.”

What's the credibility of this adminsitration when they intend to propose a deal with N.Korea and have all this muck exposed? What's the credibility of this dotus at the current time with all the lies getting exposed? How many overseas visits does he plan to do this year ? I wonder how his Brexit visit will work out.